Better Late Than Never

You know how it goes. You're at some party or event and your camera battery dies or you're busy so you ask someone if they can take pictures and give a copy to you later. Usually, you never get the pictures. Well, someone else took these pictures (Thanks Mom!) and I obviously did get the copies, it just took awhile for me to get them transferred to the computer. We'll start back at Cade's birthday party...

Birthday boy, Pa and me.

Cam and Pa

Judging by the cheesy grin on Kevin's face and the fact that neither Pa nor I are looking at the camera, Kevin must have said something right before the picture was taken.


This was one of Cade's presents - his very own scooter. He can ride his brothers' two-wheeled scooters alright but this one is his favorite.


The boys and their scooters.

I just love this picture of Cade.




Helping Pa give the Corvette a 450hp transplant!





Since I wasn't even on the same side of the Mississippi, Kevin had to take charge in getting the family Christmas tree. Here he is cutting down his first tree.




Kevin helping Tootie drag their tree down the hill.

Kevin's one and only soccer tournament was in December. I missed that too. I think he looks big in this picture. I called Dana to check on the game just seconds after he made a goal. When I heard that I almost cried because I missed it!

Family portrait on Christmas day.

Digging Out

We've made pretty good progress on digging out from under our avalanche of boxes and have an almost normal house. Our layout is a little weird but it works for us. We made Cameron's room out of the sun room that opens directly to the living room. We're trying to figure out what to do for a room divider to hide his perpetual mess. The formal dining room is now our game room/office. Except our computer is temporarily in the master bedroom because, for obvious reasons, there are no cable outlets in the dining room. Gotta fix that! At least Kevin and Cade have normal bedrooms. We still have some boxes in the house that we're slowly sorting through. A lot of them are on hold until we get the garage sorted out a little better. But at least there's light at the end of the tunnel and it ain't the train.

Since the weather has been rather yucky, we've been spending our evenings at home. The boys and I are hooked on Guitar Hero - or at least I am - so we spend a portion of our evenings playing games together. You have to play that game if you ever get the chance. It's fun. I'm almost embarrassed to admit we have it for both Cameron's Wii and Kevin's Xbox. Kevin has regular GH with 2 guitars so we can play head to head. Cameron has GH World Tour with the drums and microphone. No one is really brave enough to sing yet but we have fun with the instruments.


Kevin and I are playing together on his Xbox. If you look closely, Cade even has his toy guitar and is "playing" with us.



Cade likes to join in on the action. Here he is jamming out on the drums!



In case you couldn't tell by the gravel instead of grass, this is at our house in Las Cruces. Kevin got a new helmet for Christmas and gave his old one to Cade. Cade wore the helmet around the house and anytime he was riding one of his toys. Here's my safety conscious boy riding his 4-wheeler.

Doesn't he look cute? Unfortunately, there really isn't room to ride it here. There aren't any sidewalks on our side of the street and our driveway sure as heck isn't empty anymore.

A picture only a desert rat would take. We're still new enough to this environment to enjoy the sight of ice forming on everything. That is, unless I have to scrape it off the windshield. I thought the heated mirrors and rear window was a waste of money when I bought my pickup. Now I wish all the windows had heating elements!

Our subdivision has a playground not too far from here so Dana took the boys to play yesterday during an unusually mild day. She didn't get any warm, fuzzy feelings from most of the people she saw. Not that they were bad or scary people but I just don't think a golf course community is the right place for us. Unless they let me start riding on it! Bwaaahaaaahaaaaa! Sigh. I can only imagine. At any rate, we have at least a year here so we have plenty of time to figure out what we want to do or where to go.

We did finally meet some neighbors this past week! I have to back up a little to give you the full effect. Picture this: Its about 6:30 in the evening and Dana is doing laundry as I'm complaining about the house being cold - as usual. She tosses my pajamas to me, fresh out of the dryer, and tells me to put those on. I bask in the warmth and comfort that is clean, just dried PJs. She puts hers on too. A little later, someone knocks on the doorbell. The kids were literally running and yelling down the hall when she knocked so I couldn't pretend no one was home. I went ahead and opened the door and tried to do the peek-around-the-door trick so the person wouldn't see what I was wearing. When she introduced herself and told me she brought a pie to welcome us to the neighborhood I saw no choice but to invite her in. Dana tried to hide but I made her come out too. I wasn't about to suffer in embarrassment alone. She was a very nice lady, about the same age as us (Dana and I are still, like, 24 or so ). Turns out she and her husband own the Ford dealership in town. Funny thing was we had just dropped our Fusion off there for some warranty work about an hour earlier. Since then, when we talked to the people at the dealership, they knew who we were (Jim's neighbor) and have been very friendly and helpful. A far cry from Borman Autoplex in Las Cruces (those dopes told us the whistling through the door seal was "normal" and refused to do anything) but I digress. Now we've met 2 neighbors and both seem to be very nice. So far so good!

Hopefully the weather will warm up soon so we can get the kids outside more often. Today Cade broke one of our dining room chairs (broke both uprights on the back) and followed that up by wiping out a candle holder in the bedroom. Both times I watched it happen but was too far away to do anything. Then again, if they're outside they'll probably crash a soccerball through a window or something.

I believe everyone knows we made it to Bama safely. It was smooth sailing for the 5 of us throughout the whole trip. The worst thing I had to contend with was a sort-of-low tire on the motorcycle trailer as we got ready to leave the hotel on Saturday morning. When you're traveling with 3 boys and that's the worst thing that happened, that's saying A LOT!!! Speaking of the boys, they were great. Dana and I were in separate cars so they pretty much rotated between us every time we stopped. Cade took that pretty seriously too. When traffic came to a stop on the highway through Dallas, Cade got mad at Dana when she wouldn't let him get in the car with me.

Speaking of traveling, if you don't have a portable GPS unit (or one in your car) I highly recommend getting one before you go on your next vacation. Those things are worth their weight in gold when you're trying to get through a strange city. And if your spouse is following in another car, make sure she stays behind you so when you switch lanes to turn toward Alabama she doesn't end up in South Carolina. Just saying.

Unfortunately, I didn't know the camera was on the floorboard next to me for the entire trip (and Dana forgot to mention it) so we didn't get any pictures on the way out. Oh well, I showed the interesting stuff to you, sans kiddos, when I moved in November.

Once we got here, we had to live with very little furniture, silverware, etc., until our stuff arrived the following Wednesday. The house was very noisy with nothing in it but the kids had a blast running full speed down the hall and sliding across the living room floor. Finally, the day came for our stuff to arrive. I played hooky to help get things organized. The movers brought our boxes in and in and in and in some more. The house was FULL of boxes. Now, 4 days later, it's only Full of boxes. We're making progress, but losing a few rooms and 1/3 the size of the house (and 2/3 the garage - I'm going to faint) makes it really tough to get moved in. Where are all the built-in shelves? Where are all the extra cabinets and closets?



This is one of the views we were facing after the packers left. As Cade would say, "Oh snap!"

To make matters worse, the packers packed EVERYTHING by double or quintuple wrapping it with paper. We have tons and tons of paper now. For example, our toilet bowl brush is a normal brush with a plastic vase type container. I opened a box to find the brush removed and paper stuffed inside the container! That's gross. I didn't want to handle that paper. Plastic trucks that were in the backyard were carefully wrapped in paper before boxing. Stuff like that. To be fair, the packers did a good job but what do we do with all this packing material? I won't even mention what the garage looks like. It will be months before I get that sorted out. The Camaro Project is officially on hold for the foreseeable future.

No joke. Dana was unwrapping our dishes and was only about 1/2 way through the box when I took this picture of the paper she had removed. The box wasn't all that big.

Cade was so excited to get his toys back. When he saw the truck pull up to our house he started singing and dancing because his toys were finally here. In an effort to keep him from destroying his room, Dana told him he could get some toys out of this box but everything had to stay on the bed. When I walked in, he had a pretty good pile going but he was being very careful not to let anything get on the floor. When he dropped a piece of tape from the box he asked me to pick it up right away.

You know what they say about kids and boxes. The boys are having a blast playing in them. They especially like the wardrobe boxes. As usual, I can't really comment on Cameron's expression.

Quality GameBoy time together.

The boys also started school this week. Kevin was pretty nervous and I was nervous for them. I remember how much I hated moving to a new school and I didn't want these boys to go through that. Fortunately, Kevin's school assigned a buddy to him and that worked really well. He had an instant friend and didn't have to wander around trying to find everything on his own so he actually enjoyed his first day. He even had some boys tell him that a couple of girls like him. On his first day! The part I think he's most proud of though, was the fact that his freakshow arm twisting thing had several kids walk up to him and ask him if he would do that thing with his arms. I'll get a video to show you but he holds his hands behind his back and pulls them over his head without breaking his grip.

Cameron's day was fine as well. The teacher had told Cam there was another Cameron in his class so my Cam was really excited to meet him. (Did that make sense? It was hard to type.) Turns out, the other Cameron is a bit of a trouble maker so our Cameron decided to steer clear of that boy. But he did make a friend and had a lot of good things to say about school that evening. All told, I would call it a successful and fairly uneventful transition for both of them.

Dana is still retired for the time being. She spends her days eating bon bons and telling me how hard she's working on unpacking. I know better though.

I spent the last week feeling under-dressed at work with my jeans and running shoes. When I went home to NM, I wore my nice work shoes but I forgot to set them aside when the packers came. I figured my Dockers would look pretty stupid with gray tennis shoes so I went for the "Relaxed Friday" look all week. But that was the least of my worries. Follow along as I tell you a tale of "The Haircutting Incident". As you will see, this is all Dana's fault. You see, I had Dana cut my hair on the 28th. Normally, she cuts everything one length then puts a shorter comb on the clippers and cuts the back and sides again. When she's done, I pick up the clippers, switch combs back to the longer one and buzz a few places that she always misses. Well this time she thought she would play some kind of mean prank on me and only cut my hair one length. When she was done she removed the comb (keywords here) and walked out. This one length thing totally threw off my mojo but I hadn't realized it yet. I picked up the clippers and thought to myself that there was no need to change anything because it's all the same length. I then proceeded to buzz the side of my head where there were several extra long strands. See? She set me up! The worst part was that moment of realization as the clippers made that grinding sound like they're really cutting through something instead of the quick buzz-buzz they normally make when you're trimming a few hairs. Needless to say, I looked like a complete moron with 1 week until I had to be back at work. The good news, and I never thought I'd say this, is that because of my gray hair on the other (still hairy) side of my head, it wasn't too terribly noticeable, especially from a distance. Still, I wore a hat everywhere for the next week.

See that big bald spot above my ear that gives me a horizontal sideburn thing? Totally Dana's fault!

And finally, a couple of random pictures from before our move. Photo credit goes to Mom.

Proof that the kids got their good looks from Dana. This was pre-"haircut incident".

Picture of Pa and his littlest buddy.

Post-Christmas Catchup

I've been planning to update our blog for the last few days but I've spent most of my time on Facebook. No one told me I would get sucked into it like that. Well, okay, maybe one person tried to warn me but you should have typed it in all caps or something Kim to tell me you were serious! Dana hasn't been much help controlling my obsession because if I'm not on Facebook, she is.


So after tearing myself away for the evening, I figured I'd better post a quick (or not) blog update since I have to disassemble the computer tonight and won't be back online until sometime after our stuff arrives in Athens on Tuesday.

We had a really nice Christmas this year. My mom went with us to the Christmas Eve service at our church, then we drove around looking at lights. Kevin woke up at 4:30 Christmas morning and couldn't go back to sleep so he patiently waited, under threat of death from Dana, not to wake us up until 6:00. Right before 6, he woke up both of his brothers and marched them through the house to make sure they didn't peak at the presents first (such a good kid!) and woke us up to the children's battle cry heard 'round the world on Christmas morning. "Wake up! Wake up! Santa came! It's Christmas! Wake up!" I drug myself out of bed, started a fire, and got the camera ready to capture the carnage that is Christmas morning. Exactly 3 minutes, 12 seconds later, wrapping paper was strewn about the room, hanging from the ceiling fans, lost behind the TV, and completely carpeting the entire living room.

Later that morning, we headed to my parents house to spend the day with them. My sister and niece also came as well as my sister's new significant other, Adam. That was the first time we met him. Really nice guy. All-in-all, it was great day.

In other news, Kevin is really starting to worry about moving to Alabama. He's really going to miss his buddies here. Pray for my little buddy to help make the transition easy on him and his brothers.

Saturday, we got together with our Life Group to have a Christmas/Welcome Temporarily Home Steve (training in GA to be a US Marshall)/Goodbye Reynolds family party. Good friends those people are and we'll really miss them.

Yesterday, we had several friends stop by to visit one last time. It's hard not to wonder if I didn't make a mistake taking this job in Bama.

Today, while running errands, Cade saw a pickup pulling an empty trailer and said, "A trailer! But there's no bikes on it!" That was one of those moments in fatherhood that brings a tear of pride to my eye. What IS the point of a trailer if it isn't loaded with motorcycles? Silly people.

As I type, our house is cluttered with boxes of all sizes containing almost everything we own. The packers should finish tomorrow morning then the loaders will load the truck on Wednesday. Should take about 1/2 a day. We'll head out on Thursday afternoon and plan on arriving at our new home on Saturday. It's getting harder and more depressing to see my house emptied (and my garage!).

I'll start the picture update with the random photos of the daily mayhem in our household.


Cade thinks he's Superman jumping off the footboard of our bed. I like the grin on his face.

Here, he just finished combing his hair all by himself without being asked. Not bad. Trendy, but not bad.

Here's one of Cam at Inlow in November. I just think he looks cool except for his goober visor-less helmet. Which reminds me, I ordered a new visor in August and it still hasn't arrived!

Pretty much a normal picture of Cameron. Did you ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Remember how it was impossible to take a nice, normal picture of Calvin? He's my Calvin.


Hey look, a nice picture! This wasn't the first try though. Try to take a picture like this and you end up with several more pictures like...

This.

Cameron handing out presents on Christmas morning. That boy NEVER wears a shirt unless we make him and we're lucky we caught him with pants on in this photo.

Like big brother like little brother. Don't these kids realize it's December? Put some clothes on! Santa brought this spoiled boy an iPod Touch. Have you seen those things? Holy Cow, they're awesome! And why do the kids get all the cool stuff nowadays? I want one!

Cade loves his new toy gun!

My hottie and our youngest boy.

Cade really loves his new bicycle/video game courtesy of Pa and Tootie.

Cameron jamming out to Guitar Hero on the Wii.

And with that, we wish you all a Happy New Year. Wish us luck as we turn the page and start a new chapter in our lives!

Home Sweet Home

I made it back to Mexico! New Mexico, whatever. According to my fellow Alabamanese (?) it's all the same. It sure is good to be able to see the horizon and mountains again! And my garage!!! Geez, I'm going to miss this house.

I came home last Thursday to spend Christmas here and then we'll all be getting ready to make the move on January 1. In the meantime, I keep telling Dana I'm on vacation but she's still making me work and do all kinds of hard stuff around the house. What's up with that?

The boys had a Christmas singing performance on Friday to wrap up their school for this year. My parents were even able to go watch. That's the first time my dad has been able to go to one of those. After their performance was over, Dana and I went to each of the boys' classrooms for a few minutes and took their pictures with some of their friends.

Here are some pictures of Cameron and his friends:

And Kevin with his buddies:

This obviously isn't at school, but here is another of Kevin's best friend.

My best friend came to visit from Silver City on Saturday. It's been awhile since I've seen him so I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to him and his family and I really appreciated his effort to come see us before we left town. I met that guy back in 2nd grade and we've been best friends ever since.

When Dana isn't working us to death around the house (clean your room, do the dishes (cracks the whip), dust EVERYTHING! and don't make too much noise because I'm trying to relax on the couch with my container of bon-bons!) we've just been hanging around the house not doing much of anything. It's been pretty nice. We had most of our Christmas shopping done fairly early so we didn't have too much of a last minute panic like we usually do. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been very good. It was really windy and nasty yesterday so we hid indoors all day.

I saw Jennifer's e-mail to Dana suggesting she sign up with Facebook. Neither of us had ever even looked at that website before so I figured I'd be the guinea pig and sign up. I'm all set up and Dana made half an effort to sign up but now we don't know what we're supposed to do. I did make Dana accept me as a friend though so I now have ONE friend. Actually, I accepted me for her because I knew her password. Shhhh! She doesn't have any friends yet. I'm not sure if I should brag about having more friends than her or if I should be upset with her for not asking me, her own husband, to be her friend.

These next few pictures were taken back in November.

The Wiles family all got together (w/o ME!) at Inlow for Thanksgiving. Seeing all these kids on dirt bikes (and ATV) brings a tear of joy to my eyes!

Papa, Galena, Dana and the boys

I just took this one a few days ago. Cade has been wearing these goggles everywhere.

Cade is my little helper in the garage. Notice, the boy who owns this bike is no where to be seen.

Sweet Home Alabama

I know everyone has been waiting with baited breath for an update about life in Alabama. Right? Fine, no one even noticed I had been offline. I see how you are. I don’t know how people survived before the internet. I was going through some serious withdrawls until I finally got a computer at work on Wednesday. I don’t have a computer at home so I spent most of my evenings curled up in a ball in the corner, rocking back and forth and muttering to myself. I have a computer now but no internet connection so I have to find a restaurant that offers wireless to its customers. See what I go through for this blog thing? Sheesh.

So my last day at work was really nice. My coworkers arranged a potluck lunch and gave me a few gifts as a going away present. I got a collage with pictures that defined my work out there (White Sands Test Facility) over the last 11 years. Everyone signed around the border to give it that personal touch. My roomie also made another collage that summarized our antics over the years. And, a bunch of them pitched in and bought a really nice, framed pin set (the kind of pin you wear on your clothes) that had the logo for all the shuttle missions from 1997 – 2002. They also gave me a couple of gift cards with the left over money. It was all very nice and a little emotional too. I tell you, it sure felt weird being on that side of the going away party.

My last few days at home were hectic as I tried to get everything ready but with the help of my wonderful family, we managed to get ‘er dun. We all went out to eat one last time on Monday (11/17). Then I spent most of the day Tuesday stuffing the Camaro to the gills and the Titan beyond the gills before driving into the great unknown at about 3:00 that afternoon. I have a very vivid memory of looking up the street as I turned the corner and watching Dana, Kevin and Cade waving goodbye. Cameron had already gone inside. (More on that in a second) Two days later I arrived, after a relatively uneventful trip, at our new home in Athens, AL. When it was all said and done, I slept in 4 states in 4 days (and drove through part of another).

Poor little Cameron was apparently taking my moving harder than we all realized. The next day at school, Kevin was called to the Principal’s office to console his little brother. Cameron started crying when he got in class and couldn’t quit so the teacher sent him to the office to settle him down (Like that’s going to help! That would have freaked me out when I was his age!). Sweet Kevin talked to Cam and stayed there until he was ok but Kevin later admitted he almost started crying too. That broke my heart when I heard that!

Everyone keeps telling me the area is in a drought but I think I’ve already seen more rain than I did in Las Cruces all year. These people have no idea what a drought is. And it’s cold here! What the heck? And what’s with days like Monday where the overnight low was 34 and the high was 37? It’s a different world.

And people talk funny here.

I’m still trying to figure out what it is that I do at work. And talk about acronym city! I thought WSTF was bad. I’m not kidding – in a meeting Friday one slide was titled something like “FC/ACU ERB ECC DAC2B”. Now you tell me what that means.

I’m slowly starting to pick up on things but I think it will be awhile before I can be productive. Right now I spend pretty much all day in meetings but I don’t have anything to contribute. It bothers me to be like that. I want to jump in and get my hands dirty and get going.

In general, I think people are more friendly here but I hate the way they drive. If the speed limit is 60, someone in each lane will idle out of the stoplight and take their time getting up to 40. More often than not, they’re in the fast lane. If they’re not doing that, they’re busy squeezing into the space between you and the car in front of you – regardless if there is room or not. But it’s OK, because most of them will flash their turn signal once.

Oh, and several people thought I was from Mexico.

I’m not overly impressed with the house I’m living in. Actually, I really don’t like it but I’m trying not to complain. It’s a cookie cutter house that was built as quickly and cheaply as possible. So things like the poor installation of the fake wood on the floors (areas with bubbles that pop when you walk through) and poor insulation throughout the house (and none in the garage) get old pretty quick. I’ve come to realize how much I really LOVE my house in Las Cruces. I’m really going to miss it and our neighbors. There are NO signs of kids anywhere near this neighborhood. I never even see anyone outside. I guess they like to keep to themselves and enjoy the peace and quiet. Just wait until everyone gets a load of the boys and all our toys! Maybe I can talk some of the golfers into a drag race across the driving range with my dirt bike!

Since I got here I've been seeing fliers and hearing advertisements for all the Christmas parades and activities. One of them was a parade of lights on the River. I thought that sounded pretty neat so I plugged the address into my Garmin last night and headed out. Jack (Garmin's name for the voice) took me to my destination which was about 6 or 7 miles from where I was supposed to be. To add insult to injury I drove right by the place on the way to nowhere. There's probably a joke about relying on a guy for directions here but I'm not going there. Anyway, once I got there, I got out and stood by the water while I waited for the parade to start. Soon the cold started soaking in and the parade was late starting. Eventually the first boat came around into view. Then another and another. Eight in all! You're kidding, right? All that hype for 8 boats? I stood in below freezing weather and drove all over Decatur (although I did stop and get gas for $1.53/gal) for 8 boats!?!

I go back to NM on the 18th! I can’t wait. I’ll drag the family across the country with me right around New Year’s Day.

I'm having some serious issues with the formatting today so I'm including my pictures at the end and I'll include the text here (Seriously - major formatting issues). They're all out of order too (mostly backwards) and I can't rearrange them. Sorry.

First picture: This is right before I get to the parking lot at work. Pretty drive.
Second picture: This is one of the routes I can take to work. It's slower but prettier than the main route.
Third picture: I saw this tree downtown and thought it was really pretty. I want the boys to see some of the colors around here.
Fourth picture: That's our new home on the right.

Disclaimer - the next few pictures were taken while I was driving so excuse the prominent dashboard or other features in the picture. I wasn't looking at the camera when I took the picture. Literally just point and shoot.

Fifth picture: Picture of the river. It has about as many boats on it now as it did during the parade.
Sixth picture: Sweet home Alabama.
Seventh picture: This is in Dallas. I took this to show the boys the colors on the trees.
Eighth picture: The scenery is changing from what I'm used to.
Ninth picture: Downtown Dallas. This picture is for Dana.
Tenth picture: West Texas. This is where they make all the wind. Sometimes in the Spring I wish they would turn it off.

I had some pictures of some of the boats last night but I can't upload them. Maybe next time...